WINWORD.EXE - vanishing doc's

That IP address you gave is for Earthlink which I assume is your ISP.

MS Word really should not need to have Internet access in most cases anyway. Just block it, but I don't think what you reported has anything to do with MS Word. It sounds more like you installed so junk software from your ISP that is trying to dial home or that it is just your ISP's DNS server trying to assign an IP address to your PC.

I don't know why this would have anything to do with your documents disappearing. Are you sure you are saving them? Are you sure you are trying to save them to your PC? Do you get confirmation that the file was saved?

This does not sound like malware; however if you want to check for malware, complete the below steps.

Please follow our standard cleaning procedures which are necessary for us to provide you support. Also there are steps included for installing, renaming, running, and posting HijackThis logs as attachments.

• Run ALL the steps in this Sticky thread READ & RUN ME FIRST Before Asking for Support
• Make sure you check version numbers and get all updates.
• Very Important: Make sure you tell us the results from running the tutorial...was anything found? Were you unable to complete any of the scans?...Were you unable to download any of the tools?...Did you do the on-line scans as suggested? etc.

• After doing ALL of the above you still have a problem make sure you have booted to normal mode and run the steps in the below link to properly use HijackThis and attach a log:

Downloading, Installing, and Running HijackThis​

Make sure you also rename HijackThis.exe as suggested in the procedures. Use analyse.exe for the new name. This is very important due to some new infections going around.​

• When you return to make your next post, make sure you attach the following logs and that you have run these scans in the following order too:
  • CounterSpy
  • AVG Antispyware log - ONLY IF NEEDED you were not able to run CounterSpy
  • Bitdefender - from step 6
  • Panda Scan - from step 6
  • runkeys.txt - the log from GetRunKey.bat
  • newfiles.txt - the log from ShowNew.bat
  • HijackThis

NOTE: You can only attach 3 files in a single message so it will require that you use two messages to attach all of these logs!

 

You're welcome.